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Devon Monk - the first few books were interesting, but I feel like she didn't develop her magic system enough.

Also, Mike Carey - the Felix Castor series. The first one is "The Devil You Know."
Kate Griffin, Matthew Swift Series. The first one is "A Madness of Angels".
These are both set in London. One think I really like about them is that the author manages to convey a slightly not-quite-human perspective from both of these characters, but the reader can still relate to them.
 
Here are a list of the authors I like (I may edit to add later, as my memory is not great.)
Anne McCaffrey - PERN is somewhere I re-visit over and over.
Robert A. Heinlein - Everything except Stranger in a Strange Land. (what was he thinking??)
Laurell K. Hamilton - Yeah, I know. The first books were awesome, but she ventured off into ... well, I lack polite terms for it.
Kim Harrison - Awesome author! I hate that the new series did not take off, but I think she lost her whole urban fantasy audience. Including me.
Charlaine Harris - I love everything she has ever written. I think she ended the Sookie series right on time, and I am happily reading the Midnight Crossing series. Good transition there.
Kevin Hearne - Great author, great pacing, good character development, enough of everything and not too much of anything. I think he is going to be one of the leading names of urban fantasy.
Jim Butcher- Harry Dresden series. I need not say more.
Tanya Huff - She could probably write a phone book and make it interesting. You just never know what she's going to do next.
Faith Hunter - Jane Yellowrock series just rocks!
Ilona Andrews- I have read their Kate Daniels series since the second book, then I went back and picked up everything else.
Devon Monk - Great series, but it really is time to close this story arc and start something new.

I am probably forgetting many people, but this is what I can think of now. I have read many other urban fantasy authors, but I agree that they are getting very "formula". I, too, avoid bodice rippers whenever possible.

Have you read Nalini Singh?
I love her Guild Hunter books followed by her Psy-Changeling series. There is some bodice ripping lol but it is very tame.

Is it bad that I enjoy bodice ripping books too? :mrgreen: Along with classics and anything else thats written. I have never met a book I did not like.

I take that back... I used to love Laurel K Hamilton and then she morphed into a train wreck. I just cant do it anymore.
 
Have you read Nalini Singh?
I love her Guild Hunter books followed by her Psy-Changeling series. There is some bodice ripping lol but it is very tame.

Is it bad that I enjoy bodice ripping books too? :mrgreen: Along with classics and anything else thats written. I have never met a book I did not like.

I take that back... I used to love Laurel K Hamilton and then she morphed into a train wreck. I just cant do it anymore.

I do not think it is bad at all. I am not a prude, but that stuff is just not my cup of tea. Just makes it hard to find stuff I like. :)
 
Awww thanks everyone. I'd rather not blab my real name all over the forum but if you're super interested in the title of the book feel free to PM me.

And omg bring on the bodice rippers! I love romance novels. No shame.
I've only read one Hamilton book. Blue Moon, it was AWESOME. It was actually the very first urban fantasy I read. Lol the start of complete and utter addiction. Like you said Serene, I keep hearing that her books went a bit off the rails but I still want to read more since I've only read the one. I want to start back at Book 1 of the Anita Blake series since Blue Moon is actually book 10 or something like that. I heard the series doesn't go crazy until book 20 so I've got plenty of time lol.
 
Awww thanks everyone. I'd rather not blab my real name all over the forum but if you're super interested in the title of the book feel free to PM me.

And omg bring on the bodice rippers! I love romance novels. No shame.
I've only read one Hamilton book. Blue Moon, it was AWESOME. It was actually the very first urban fantasy I read. Lol the start of complete and utter addiction. Like you said Serene, I keep hearing that her books went a bit off the rails but I still want to read more since I've only read the one. I want to start back at Book 1 of the Anita Blake series since Blue Moon is actually book 10 or something like that. I heard the series doesn't go crazy until book 20 so I've got plenty of time lol.

Not 20. IMO, "Obsidian Butterfly" book 9 is the last good one. From then on it's all group sex and pseudo-therapy. Badly written group sex.
 
I am with Dixiedragon on this one. The last one I read was book 17. I should have stopped at book 10. sigh

PS- do not bother picking up her Merry Gentry series. The Anita Blake series is tame if you compare.. bleh

Sere
 
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This has me interested! I read the novel Orphan Train and was really interested in the history there, so this might be a good non-fiction pick for the year! I try to read a couple non-fiction things every year but was struggling to come up with what to put on the list this year.

Last year I did Shadow Divers (AMAZING - reads like a novel lol!), Dead Wake (who knew Churchill was so shady??) and The Barbary Plague (about the Black Death outbreak in San Fransisco in the early 20C. Fascinating subject but just an "OK" read).

Ooooh! Awesome! I'm going to look into those! Churchhill was shady??

You know, when I was younger I used to think that people in the old days were so much more honorable and honest than modern folks. Now I know better, (But I'm so incredibly disappointed. That mindset I blame on early history lessons in school - where history books tell only the "clean" side of the facts. George Washington and the cherry tree, Paul Revere, etc)

I'm loving this Orphan Train book - lots explanation to the social norms, desperate conditions in the cities, and views of childhood. Such hard lives, in my opinion, probably caused a huge amount dysfunction and mental illness in the general population which naturally would have affected local and national culture. And certainly - compassion was a luxury. Life was too much a matter of survival.
 
You may enjoy "America's Forgotten Pandemic" by Alfred Crosby. It's about the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. He estimates that as many as 100 million people died worldwide, but because WWI was going on, there was newspaper censorship in most of the world, so there are very few direct records. Plus influenza deaths weren't required to be reported at that time. They are now b/c of this. In the US, estimated lifetimes on actuary tables dropped by 30 years.

Now why was there a need to censor flu deaths? Hmmm...going to have to look into this book!
 
Now why was there a need to censor flu deaths? Hmmm...going to have to look into this book!

Because WWI was going on and nobody wanted the enemy to know that their cities were being paralyzed by an epidemic. Its called the Spanish Flue not b/c it started there, but b/c Spain was one of the few countries not censoring the newspapers, so the flu epidemic was in the news here. There's some evidence that it actually started here in the US in 1917 as a weaker version, traveled across the Atlantic with troop transports, then got meaner and came back.
 
Ooooh! Awesome! I'm going to look into those! Churchhill was shady??

Apparently - and I had never heard any of this before I read the book, though admittedly, I don't remember much about studying WWI in school...(spoiler! If you can call history a spoiler...)



....that Churchill thought the war would be lost unless the US joined the fight, and Wilson was hesitant, so Churchill allowed the Lusitania to enter waters he knew to be crawling with U-boats, without escort, to be gunned down by a U-boat.


It's a great read! I've read Larson's "Devil in the White City" and "In the Garden of Beasts" and this was easily my favorite of the three.
 
Apparently - and I had never heard any of this before I read the book, though admittedly, I don't remember much about studying WWI in school...(spoiler! If you can call history a spoiler...)



....that Churchill thought the war would be lost unless the US joined the fight, and Wilson was hesitant, so Churchill allowed the Lusitania to enter waters he knew to be crawling with U-boats, without escort, to be gunned down by a U-boat.


It's a great read! I've read Larson's "Devil in the White City" and "In the Garden of Beasts" and this was easily my favorite of the three.

That's outrageous! Sacrificing all those innocent lives, manipulating national opinion, all based on his interpretations from his "crystal ball". Beyond shady. :evil:

(Amazon, here I come!)
 
Not 20. IMO, "Obsidian Butterfly" book 9 is the last good one. From then on it's all group sex and pseudo-therapy. Badly written group sex.

Oh wow, Blue Moon must be much earlier in the series than I remember. Anita is still pretty prudish in it and is SUPER uncomfortable with even being casually touched by people.
 
Oh wow, Blue Moon must be much earlier in the series than I remember. Anita is still pretty prudish in it and is SUPER uncomfortable with even being casually touched by people.

Hence the group therapy. Anita becomes a bizarre ****ographic fanfic caricature of herself. The way to solve ALL problems in the latter books is for Anita to bang somebody new. It's really horrible. Makes me cry.
 
I am not reading GoT again until he finishes. And if he pulls a Robert Jordan and leaves this mortal coil before it is done... I will never forgive him.

I agree. Love the series, but I have the feeling he will never complete it.

I just started Brooklyn (recommended by daughter) and am nearly finished with The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell (gift from son). Next up is book 2 of the Century Trilogy by Ken Follett.

And if anyone hasn't read Pillars of the Earth by Follett, it might be my all time favorite.
 
With Hamilton's books I got through a few after Obsidian Butterfly by basically skimming through all the gratuitous sex scenes, because I was attached to the characters, but it got to the point where there wasn't enough plot there for that to be worthwhile
 
You know whats a good urban fantasy series that no one talks about? Its a little older but the Eric Banyon books and the expanded universe that goes with them by Mercedes Lackey
 

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